Reply #102: Great rant with one very small problem

[jmowreader]

The "official date" for the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe was November 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall opened. Reagan wasn't president then. The evil but clueless GHWB through neglect managed to let the Soviet Union die on the vine.

Ronald Reagan extended the lifespan of communism by at least eight years, because he provided the Soviet Politburo with the convenient bogeyman they so desperately needed. If Carter would have won reelection the Soviets would have been gone in, at latest, 1983 because Carter's policy was just to stand back and let them go under. Reagan forced massive Soviet defense expenditures that managed to sustain communism long after it should have been gone.

My view of it all is Soviet communism collapsed because the Soviet people were tired of wearing "Ohio Jean" (the most popular brand of blue jeans in the USSR was "Ohio Jean"--with all the fashion-forward sensibility of Lower Sandusky, Ohio Jean wore like a cast-iron frying pan and was nearly as flexible) and wiping their asses on toilet paper with metal shavings in it. Reagan fucked that up.